title: A comparative high-throughput screening protocol to identify entry inhibitors of enveloped viruses.
abstract: Emerging and reemerging human viral pathogens pose great public health concerns since therapeutics against these viruses are limited. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop novel drugs that can block infection of either a specific virus or a number of viruses. Viral entry is thought to be an ideal target for potential therapeutic prevention. One of the challenges of developing antivirals is that most of these viruses are highly pathogenic and therefore require high biosafety-level containment. In this study, we have adopted a comparative high-throughput screening protocol to identify entry inhibitors for three enveloped viruses (Marburg virus, influenza virus H5N1, and Lassa virus) using a human immunodeficiency virus-based pseudotyping platform. We demonstrate the utility of this approach by screening a small compound library and identifying putative entry inhibitors for these viruses. One major advantage of this protocol is to reduce the number of false positives in hit selection, and we believe that the protocol is useful for inhibitor screening for many enveloped viruses.
authors.affiliation: 1Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Han
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Kiira
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ratia
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Varhegyi
authors.forename: William G
authors.initials: WG
authors.lastname: Hendrickson
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Lijun
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rong
mesh_terms: D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D002460:Cell Line; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000379:methods; D057166:High-Throughput Screening Assays; D006801:Humans; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D054852:Small Molecule Libraries; D053586:Virus Internalization / Q000187:drug effects*; D014780:Viruses / Q000187:drug effects*
chemical_list: D000998:Antiviral Agents; D054852:Small Molecule Libraries
keywords: antiviral drugs; cell-based assays; comparative HTS; high-throughput screening; phenotypic drug discovery